


something to touch

by Anonymous



Category: Joker (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Extremely Underage, M/M, Parent/Child Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 15:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21448624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Something to kiss. Something to love. Something to protect and cherish and adore and think about and lust over in that memory-dream state between sleep and awake where nothing was real and guilt was abstracted and Arthur didn’t have so many messy complexities to think about.
Relationships: Arthur Fleck/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 5
Kudos: 86
Collections: Anonymous





	something to touch

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to the inevitable daddycest au that i had sitting in my drafts and never finished.

“Are you embarrassed of me?”

Smoke curled around Bruce and seemed to flutter away when he finally shook his head. “No.”

“It took you a long time to answer.”

“I was trying to think about it.”

Arthur half-smiled, his head tipping just slightly to the side against the headboard. “So you needed to think about it, then.”

“Of course I did.” Bruce’s eyebrows knit together. “I think lots of people would be embarrassed. I was trying to see if I was different.” 

“That’s not a compliment,” Arthur said with a soft giggle, crushing his cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. “You think I’m embarrassing.”

“Yes,” Bruce said simply, “but I don’t mind.”

“What about Carnival is embarrassing?”

“You’re Carnival. It doesn’t make any sense you talk about him like it’s two different people. You’re him.”

“No no no no, Bruce, you don’t understand, Carnival is a role that I play. He has a life of his own. He has a lore and a character. He’s a different person and I care about him like he is.”

“You’re weird,” Bruce muttered, rolling onto his back. 

“You’re weird,”  Arthur countered, following Bruce in turn and grabbing the sides of his face, kissing him firmly on the lips. “Don’t get jealous, Bruce; Carnival loves you just as much as I do.”

“I don’t care if Carnival loves me or not,” Bruce complained. 

“Well, like it or not, he loves you. He loves you from your head to your toes.” Arthur kissed Bruce’s nose, then his lips again. Softly. He lingered, balanced over and between Bruce’s small, deer-gangly body, one hand braced against the bed and the other brushing Bruce’s hair away from his face. 

The third kiss was always the most dangerous. Always the tipping point. Arthur let out a tiny, muffled sigh against Bruce’s mouth, brushing his tongue over Bruce’s bottom lip. He felt the familiar twist in his insides, heat and guilt and want working their way through him to make him feel tight and trapped inside his pants. 

Arthur pulled away, exhaling. He stroked his thumb over Bruce’s cheek, gazing down at Bruce’s mouth. “He loves you and so do I. Don’t ever forget that.”

* * *

Arthur had this sort of, well, thing. An odd thing. An innate desire to hold children and keep them and make them happy, make them smile and laugh, make them feel good. And sometimes that could manifest itself in the wrong sorts of ways. He never meant harm by it, he never wanted to hurt anyone, it was never malicious, but it was still thought of as wrong. It was something he could and would be punished for and made to feel guilty about, so Arthur tried to keep himself under a proverbial lock and key and his hands to himself. 

It seemed to get harder and harder every day around Bruce. 

The boy was beautiful. He had Sophie’s pretty eyes and nose, his features pliable and delicate. His sweet, soft mouth was always wet and warm around Arthur’s fingers and tongue and Arthur had to try desperately not to imagine how it feel between his legs. Arthur loved him with an unmatched tenderness and intensity, his own flesh and blood that could mirror him with his dark hair and angles and pouting mouth, and it had twisted and mangled itself into a hideous, ugly, perverted thing that Arthur loathed himself for. It was a garden of thorns. 

He had never let himself go too far.

Arthur was careful. He wanted to protect Bruce’s innocence as long as he possibly could, trying to wait it out until Bruce was too old for Arthur to want him anymore. Always just kissing, never anything more. Careful, careful, careful,  always so careful. It was the most Arthur would let himself have. Anything else would be cruel, manipulative, and abusive. And Bruce could and would never, ever deserve that. 

* * *

“I’m almost nine.” 

Arthur looked up from Bruce’s shoe to his scowling face, stormy and impatient. 

“Not almost,” Arthur said quickly. “Still a few months now.”

“I know how to tie my shoes. I’ve known for a long time, actually.”

“I just want to do this for you,” Arthur muttered, looking back down and wrapping the laces on Bruce’s shoe around his fingers. “Bruce, I only have a few years with you before you get too old to need me for anything at all. Please let me have this.”

“I can do it myself,” Bruce snapped, jerking back from the edge of the bed. “I don’t want you to help me.”

Arthur grabbed Bruce’s ankle and yanked him back, an irrational desperation seizing his reflexes. The fabric of Bruce’s pants crumpled in Arthur’s grip as his fingers dug in, his breath hot and trembling. “I need everything I can get from you,” he said, his words slow and deliberately annunciated so he wouldn’t misspeak. “I need all of you as you are right now, when you’re like this. I need you to be mine for as long as I can have you. Okay? Can you please let me have that? Is that okay?” 

He shut his eyes and rested his forehead against Bruce’s shin, his hand coming up further to stroke Bruce’s thigh. “Please,” he murmured, the  _ “I’m almost nine” _ weighing on his heart like a death sentence. “I’m sorry. I need you more than you know.” 

Bruce sighed, annoyed but compliant. “You’re never dead when I get home from school. You’ll be fine if you don’t get to touch me all the time.”

Arthur felt a little lurch in his stomach with that. He swallowed and withdrew his hand from Bruce’s thigh, sitting back on his heels. 

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Why do you touch me so much?”

Arthur closed his eyes again. “I don’t know. I just care about you. That’s how I show it.” 

Bruce was quiet for a moment before saying, “That’s normal, isn’t it?”

Arthur pressed his cheek against Bruce’s leg, rubbing the fabric of his pants between two fingers. 

“Yes.”

* * *

Even though Arthur needed Bruce to be older, he was still terrified of the idea that Bruce would, in fact, be older someday. He was almost nine, which was almost ten, which was teetering on the edge of puberty. A loss of innate innocence and kindness and purity that made children into the wonderful little extraordinary beings that they were. Bruce would no longer be soft-skinned, his milky, smooth complexion marred with hair or acne. His face and body would grow sharper, losing their baby fat. He’d get taller and taller and Arthur would no longer be able to pick him up and hold him; he was already almost too heavy for it as it was. He would rebel and begin to grow away from Arthur. 

Arthur would stop being so frighteningly tempted, but he would lose his little boy in the process and never get him back and it terrified Arthur to his very core. He thought that he would almost be better off pining after his son rather than the memory of him. At least he would still have something to touch and feel to be reminded that Bruce was still real, he was still just as little in Arthur’s arms. 

Something to kiss. Something to love. Something to protect and cherish and adore and think about and lust over in that memory-dream state between sleep and awake where nothing was real and guilt was abstracted and Arthur didn’t have so many messy complexities to think about. 


End file.
